Glenn Robinson’s Contributions Don’t Always Show Up in the Box Score
By Ben Gibson
When Glenn Robinson III was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves a year ago former Indiana Pacers star Jalen Rose said the newly minted rookie contributed in ways that couldn’t be measured in the box score. During ESPN’s coverage Rose explained what he saw in the then Timberwolves rookie who was taken with the 40th overall pick.
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"“Anytime you play alongside the talent he’s played with the last couple years, and the success that they’ve had as a team, sometimes people want to only judge you by statistics,” ESPN analyst and Michigan alum Jalen Rose said following Robinson’s selection. “They don’t judge you by the hockey assists, they don’t judge you by being there to help on defense and playing within a team system.“I think he did that very well at Michigan and continued to improve, seemingly each game.”"
Of course Rose is biased as a former Michigan player himself, but its worth looking for the potential he saw in the rookie.
Robinson’s numbers so far in the NBA aren’t great in 7.5 minutes a game he played last season between the Timberwolves (who waived him) and the Philadelphia 76ers. Robinson averaged 2.1 points on 38.8% shooting between the two teams.
It’s worth noting that when Minnesota drafted him they expected Robinson to play in the D-League. All of Minnesota’s injuries made that next to impossible for Flip Saunders as Brendan F. Quinn of MLive.com reported when Robinson was waived.
"“Well, we expected he’d be in the NBDL,” Saunders told NBA.com earlier this season. “Unfortunately, with all the injuries, we haven’t been able to do that because we needed him when we would have any kind of practice or even for shootaround.”"
It didn’t help that he was playing behind Andrew Wiggins either.
So while that doesn’t entirely excuse Robinson’s 1.2 points a game on 33.3% shooting with the Timberwolves, it makes it much less surprising that Robinson struggled playing against NBA talent early on. Robinson played in 25 games with Minnesota before he was waived and then claimed by Philadelphia where he played in 10 games. The good news for hopeful Indiana Pacers fans is that in his time with the 76ers his numbers went up slightly to 4.4 points a game on 41.9% shooting. While Philadelphia often looks like a D-League team. they were playing against actual NBA teams when Robinson was improving and averaging 15.3 minutes a game with the 76ers. If you stretch those numbers out over a per 100 possessions basis, then Robinson has the potential to average 10+ points a game.
The question still remains whether those are simply the product of a player on a bad team or if there is the potential that Rose saw. It helps Robinson’s case that in the 108 minutes he played in Minnesota that the team was a +8 average with him on the floor. The same was true for Philadelphia as they were +2.8 in his 153 minutes with them. Overall he ended the year with a +/- of 0.8 so if nothing else at least we can say he wasn’t deadweight. His net rating was +3.1 last season, and that was on two team that sported net rating worse than -9. As far as the numbers say, he was a positive in the limited time he was on the floor.
All this is evidence to support Jalen’s idea that Robinson’s contributions aren’t always easy to see in the regular statistics. Robinson came into the league after two years of college and won’t turn 22 until January. He’s young and raw and played for a pair of teams last year that either were in the process of rebuilding or tanking like nobody has before. Just looking at the numbers, even the more analytical ones, aren’t going to tell us for sure how Robinson’s career will play out. However they do at least support the idea that Robinson is going to contribute to the Pacers in positive ways.